The police chief in Charlottesville, as well as the city spokesperson and mayor, have all gone on record and explicitly said that there was no stand-down order put out that day.

In March 2018, a FOIA request made public an internal police memo from August 7th, days before the Charlottesville rally. In the memo, there was discussion of how the permit for the rally had been granted with a prediction of 400 people attending, but that intelligence gathered indicated that it would be way more people than that and that violence was a very likely outcome. The memo explicitly said, quote, Officers should keep close watch of the crowd members who are exhibiting behaviors which could become violent. Officers should make arrests when appropriate for unlawful behavior and should use issued flex cuffs as restraints. Granted, this plan was not followed through on, owing largely to shitty communication and contradictory orders, many of which seemed to prioritize police officers' safety over civilian safety. Police allocated manpower in horrible fashion, and there seemed to be almost no coordination or shared responsibilities between the Charlottesville Police Department and Virginia State Police, who served basically as park security as opposed to getting involved in active crowd control, which was desperately needed. There was no stand-down order, but there was terrible policing going on there.